Husband Material (London Calling #2)(127)

I glanced at the door. Then back at Oliver. “Is this going somewhere? Or do you want my last memory of my relationship to be a lecture on the social thingy paradigm of marriage.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say.” Oliver’s grip on my wrist tightened so abruptly he nearly pulled me into his lap. “I don’t want this to be your last memory of our relationship. I still want to be with you. I want to be with you desperately. I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I just don’t want it to be within a framework of…

of…the social thingy paradigm of marriage.”

This was so typical of Oliver. Not only did he want to dump me at the altar and still go out with me, he wanted me to reassess my entire worldview at the same time. “But…but we were about to get married. We can’t go from being married back to dating. That’s…

that’s not how it works.”

“Which is why,” declared Oliver, “marriage will always feel straight to me. Because it presumes that a relationship is only valid if it follows a pattern that for most of our lives we were totally excluded from.”

Did we have time for this? Was five minutes and counting before we were meant to be getting married the ideal window to debate the role of same-sex marriage within the wider context of queer self-expression? “Okay. Except now we can be included. So shouldn’t we be, y’know, trying to be?”

Oliver shrugged. “For some people, absolutely. But for me, it feels like a framework I didn’t create and can’t control that I’m expected to impose on my own life.”

“And that’s why we can’t get married?” I asked. Because, oddly enough, I didn’t find this very comforting. “You love me and you want to be with me. You just don’t want to do it in the way nearly all our friends have done?”

He stood, drawing me close with the lightest tug on my wrist. I don’t know why I went—given I still strongly suspected I was angry at him—but I did. “Is that so unthinkable?”

“I–I don’t know.” I was tired enough and emotional enough that my brain was beginning to turn into an eel sandwich. “And I only have three minutes to work it out.”

I’d been staring at the numbers on my phone, but then Oliver gently turned my face to his. “Lucien,” he said softly. “You know you are the truest thing I have ever dared choose for myself. And we are the only thing I’ve ever had that I haven’t let other people define for me.”

And, suddenly, for the longest-shortest second of my life I didn’t feel tired anymore. Or confused or scared. Because Oliver loved me.

Oliver really loved me. And in this way that was just ours.

“And”—my voice was a little shaky—“that’s why you’re leaving me at the altar? Because you want to be with me so much?”

“It’s unconventional, I confess.” His eyes glimmered with something that might have been laughter or might have been a few stray tears. “But then you’ve never been a conventional person. And I’m…perhaps not as conventional as I thought I was.”

“You’re a mess,” I told him.

“Oh, a complete one. But I’m your mess, Lucien. And always will be. If…” He hesitated, his stern mouth softening in that way that felt very particularly mine. “If you still want me.”

How could anyone not want Oliver Blackwood? Unlike Bridge, I’d never bothered to imagine what it might be like to be proposed to.

But I couldn’t imagine it feeling better than this.

“Fine,” I told him. “Since you asked so nicely, I’ll not marry you.”

And I guess the lack of sleep and the wedding-day stress and the whole not getting married after all had finally caught up with Oliver. Because he pulled me tightly into his arms and started laughing. “Lucien O’Donnell, you have made me the happiest of men.”

There was a knock on the door, and the nice humanist minister stuck her head briefly back in. “One minute, guys.”

“We’ll be right out,” I called from where my head was buried in the crook of Oliver’s neck.

I don’t know if we actually waited a minute, but then Oliver gently untangled us, took my hand, and led me through to face all the people who we loved and who loved us and who we’d massively inconvenienced for no reason.

Mum, Judy, and Eugenie were in the front row, two of the three doing an excellent job of not licking the other guests. The Blackwood contingent was on the other side, Mia looking genuinely happy to be there, Miriam looking like social expectation in a cream dress. A couple of rows back, I caught sight of Bridge, wearing an enormous hat and already crying on Tom’s shoulder. The James Royce-Royces, of course, were far more interested in Baby J than anything that could possibly be happening around them. And from there it was just a supportive blur of older friends, nearish relations, and the coworkers who’d insisted on coming.

At the front of the room, our best men were waiting for us. Priya, in deference to the occasion, had worn her formal Docs. And the moment she laid eyes on us, she gave me the oddest little smirk, like she knew something was up. Like she’d probably always known.

As we entered—awkwardly in advance of our own music—there was a sudden silence. I didn’t realise quite how many people were in my life until they were all in one smallish room staring at me and wondering what the fuck I was doing.